The most virulent of human malaria parasites Plasmodium falciparum kills approximately 2 million people worldwide, most of whom are children under five. In addition to its high mortality, malaria causes economic losses in adults who are unable to work because of repeated cycles of acute infection. The disease is now a well accepted cause of poverty in Africa. There are no effective vaccines against malaria and constant need for new drugs due to emergence of resistance of existing drugs. As such, what is needed are novel treatments and therapies for malaria.
The blood stage parasites that cause all of the symptoms and pathologies of malaria infect and remodel mature erythrocytes. Several hundred parasite proteins exported to the erythrocyte presumably underlie these remodeling events, but unfortunately most encode for ‘hypothetical’ proteins of unknown function. Those essential for parasitization of the erythrocyte cannot be identified in genetic knock outs. Parasite proteins such as PFEMP1 that have previously been shown to be present at the erythrocyte surface undergo rapid antigenic variation, and the diversity of the encoding var genes enables the parasite to avoid host defense.
As such, what is needed are compositions and methods for immunizing subjects against Plasmodium infection to prevent malaria, as well as methods for detecting Plasmodium infection.